Meeting Summary: In North America, more than half of all breeding bird species are considered migratory. These billions of birds partake in an annual flight from their summer grounds to their wintering sites, and back again. Through decades of banding, researchers began to understand the migratory paths taken by many of these individuals. The Motus network is one tool that takes our understanding to the next level.
The Motus Wildlife Tracking System is an international collaborative network using stationary towers that can track wildlife that are tagged with small radio transmitters called nanotags. These towers help researchers track the movements and behaviors of tagged birds across vast distances and extended periods of time. Since it is a collaborative effort, the system has the ability to optimize research and conservation resources while harnessing the power of large-scale data collection, which in turn facilitates landscape-level research.
Gulf Coast Bird Observatory (GCBO) is one of hundreds of organizations that owns and operates Motus towers in North America. GCBO, in partnership with several national wildlife refuges, The Nature Conservancy, the city of Rockport, Gulf Coast Waste and Disposal Area, and multiple private landowners, established a 15-tower complex called the Coastal Motus Tower Network for Western Gulf Avian Resource Assessment. Because the Texas coast is a major migration corridor in both spring and fall, this network has the potential to monitor thousands of birds as they move through our environment and has tremendous potential to fill gaps in our knowledge concerning bird movements.
About Our Speaker: Rebecca Bracken is the Conservation Research Director at Gulf Coast Bird Observatory (GCBO) in Lake Jackson, Texas. She received a Master’s in Biology from Texas State University and a Ph.D. in Forest Resources with a concentration in Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture from Mississippi State University. Her dissertation focused on evaluating the influence of forest management activities on breeding and wintering avian communities, and she investigated how forest age and management affected nightjar abundance. She has spent time working with species ranging from hummingbirds to long-legged wading birds, working projects in the western, central, and eastern portions of the U.S. as well as Australia. Rebecca currently leads all GCBO research projects, and is a federally and state permitted bird bander. Her current research focuses on designing and implementing monitoring programs along the upper Texas coastline, with an emphasis on shorebird behavior, productivity, and conservation.